53 Quotes by Michael Azerrad

I’ll leave it to other people to evaluate the legacy of my book, but I’m very moved when musicians tell me that they’ve been inspired by my book.

I just wanted to tell the story of a bunch of musicians who had never had their story told before. There’s no preaching or theorizing.

People didn’t get to see how other towns interpreted the underground ethos, and so they developed their own unique versions of it.

When he met Kurt and Chris, he was a saute cook at a seafood restaurant on Bainbridge Island. By night, he partied with his friends, smoking pot, drinking, and doing the potent local acid, which many swear has fried the brains of an entire generation of Bainbridge Islanders.

Critics and fans use the music of their youth as reference points. For years, people seriously wondered who “the next Beatles” were going to be, and classic rock bands were the de facto yardstick for rock quality.

Ten percent of the American population thinks that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Those are the people that have not learned the skill of filtering information from the vast barrage of inaccurate information that we’re all faced with everyday. I think that’s a very 21st century skill.

MacKaye never told anyone to get off the stage. Sometimes this encouraged a rapid and irreversible descent into chaos, but usually it just meant a steady stream of stage divers and kids who just wanted a few seconds of attention while they did some silly dance for their buddies. Anarchy, it seemed, could work.

There’s no law that says anybody has to do an interview.